There was almost total silence in the conference room as he listened to Kemp. Although his current role had him back in uniform, Kemp had at one time been a senior and highly effective Major Crime Team Detective Superintendent.
After some moments of just listening, saying nothing, Glenn felt his insides turning cold. His eyes fell on Norman Potting. He kept looking at the man. He looked away but then his eyes were drawn back to him. ‘There’s no possible chance, sir?’ he asked Kemp.
‘I’m afraid not, no,’ Kemp replied tersely, his voice close to cracking.
Glenn’s own voice was close to cracking, too. He was shaking, fighting off tears. He was trying to keep a focus on his job, despite what he was hearing. He was thinking who needed to be told, what actions needed to be taken, and what the implications for this case were.
The Royal Regent.
Red Westwood had told him just the other day that she was about to exchange contracts on an apartment in this mansion block. Now it was on fire.
Another fire.
But at this moment that took second place to the horrific news that Chief Superintendent Kemp had just given him. He looked back again at Norman Potting.
Shit. Oh shit. Oh God. In the time that he had been in the police force, some of his colleagues had had some close calls, and he’d had one himself last year when he had been shot. But you shrugged them off. Fear was something that came to you after you’d done whatever you had to do. At the time, whether you were trying to disarm a maniac wielding a scimitar, or plunging headlong into a vicious fight where you were outnumbered, or chasing a suspect across a perilous rooftop, you just got on with it, running on adrenaline, doing your job. It was only much later, in the small hours of the morning, that you woke up and thought, Shit, I could have been killed today.
Rough and tumble danger was part of what you signed up to when you joined the police. And in truth, many officers signed up for excitement. But you never really, seriously, expected that you might one day actually get killed.
Glenn could not take his eyes off Norman Potting.
Glenn’s eyes were watering. ‘Yes, thank you, sir. Thank you for informing me,’ he said to Kemp. ‘I’ll be there right away.’ He was conscious that his voice was choked. He hung up, blinking away tears.
Oh shit.
He stared at Norman Potting again.
89
Monday, 4 November
Despite all his work distractions, Roy Grace had determined that their honeymoon should be perfect, and memorable, and he had planned every detail meticulously. He had begun by ordering well in advance the best car that Brighton’s Streamline Taxis had in their fleet to take them to Gatwick Airport.
And now in the back of the Mercedes, on the M23 motorway heading towards Gatwick, his hand entwined with Cleo’s, Roy felt truly relaxed and happy. Confident that Glenn Branson could handle Operation Aardvark competently in his absence, he felt, on one of the few occasions in his life, almost without a care in the world. They were going to have a good time. A damned good time. He leaned over and kissed Cleo on the cheek. ‘God, I love you,’ he whispered.
‘I love you too,’ she whispered back, and grinned. She puckered her lips, then added, ‘Rather a lot, actually!’
There was an added bonus, which was that he wouldn’t be around for Assistant Chief Constable Cassian Pewe’s first week. What a shame!
The driver had the news on low. Suddenly he turned his head, for an instant. ‘Nasty fire in Brighton,’ he said.
Grace felt a prick of anxiety. But determined to let nothing spoil the moment, he only commented non-committally, ‘Right.’ With all the old buildings in the city, many of them fire hazards, and its population of vagrants and drunks and elderly folk who fell asleep smoking in bed, fires were all too commonplace. Nothing to fret about. He turned his thoughts back to the journey ahead.
For a special treat he’d booked business-class seats on the British Airways flight. They’d got a great deal on a suite at the Cipriani, the most romantic hotel in Venice, his agent at Travel Counsellors had told him. They had dinner reservations for tonight at that hotel, and for the next three nights at different great restaurants in the city that he’d researched carefully on the internet. And before dinner tomorrow night, they would have Bellinis at the fabled Harry’s Bar.
‘So, you still haven’t told me where we are going!’ Cleo said.
Roy grinned. ‘Have a guess.’
‘Scunthorpe?’
‘Bugger, you got it! Four nights in the Premier Inn there!’
‘You know what, I’d be happy anywhere so long as I was with you.’
‘And back at you.’
The morning rush hour had ended and the traffic was light, and there was a clear blue sky above them to add to Grace’s sunny mood. He saw the Gatwick Airport turn-off ahead, and the taxi indicated and moved over.
‘Scunthorpe has an airport, does it?’ Cleo asked in a teasing voice.
‘Humberside.’
‘So, Detective Superintendent, if we are going on honeymoon in England, why were you so insistent I checked that I had my passport with me?’
‘You don’t miss much, do you?’
She stroked his thigh suggestively. ‘All that bodily contact we’ve had – I guess some of your detection skills must have rubbed off on me.’ She kissed him again.
‘They can be a bit fussy about us southerners, up in the north.’
‘Why don’t I believe you?’
He shrugged, giving her an innocent expression, stifling a grin.
‘Want to know where I really think we are going?’ she said. ‘In fact, where I know we are going?’
‘Tell me.’
She kissed him on the cheek again, ran her tongue around his ear, then whispered seductively, ‘To bed. Soon.’
Twenty minutes later, Grace stood in his socks and placed his shoes in the security tray, along with his mobile phone, laptop, watch and belt. Then he followed Cleo through the metal detector. To his relief, neither of them pinged it. As he pulled his shoes back on, his excitement was growing. By hanging on to both of their tickets, he’d managed to conceal from her that they were flying in luxury. She would find out in a few minutes, of course, when he took her into the lounge for their first glass of champagne of the day. He could not wait to see her face.
Then his phone rang.
90
Monday, 4 November
Bryce Laurent was in a sunny mood, too, as he drove along Tongdean Avenue shortly before 10.30 a.m., despite his ridiculously itchy beard. His anger that they had played this music in church forgotten, he was humming to Van Morrison’s ‘Queen of the Slipstream’ which was playing on his van’s radio, tuned to Radio Sussex. So appropriate, as he was on his way to see his queen!
And this was a street fit for a queen. The swankiest street in all of Brighton and Hove! He passed a big bling house on his right, set well back from the road behind security gates, with a columned facade. Then an equally swanky one on his left, sitting atop a circular drive high above the road. He imagined it would have fine views of the sea over the rooftops to his right and a mile to the south. Oh yes, he could imagine living here. A swanky life. With Red.
Once upon a time.
The music ended and he heard the voice of Danny Pike welcoming back his special guest, Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, who was talking enthusiastically about his new venture, the Big Beach Cafe. But Bryce had too much on his mind to concentrate on chatter right now. ‘Sorry, Danny and Norm, catch you later, eh?’ He turned the radio off, and then braked to a halt as a learner driver ahead executed a painfully slow three-point turn. The instructor waved him through, so he drove on, looking at the numbers on the left.
But he didn’t need a street number to recognize the house he was coming to view, Tongdean Lodge; he recognized it by the ten-foot brick wall running around the perimeter that he had studied, much earlier, on Google Earth.
It was a sodding great wall, like a fortress, a
nd there were wrought-iron gates, closed. He slowed as he passed, then pulled into the kerb and parked his van a short distance on. Thinking. He had a number of plans going on inside his head all at the same time. Plans A, B, C, D. He rehearsed them all carefully in his mind. He had plenty of time. Over an hour and a half before Red would be arriving for her appointment. Ahead he watched another learner driver under instruction also making an absurdly slow three-point turn. And further along the road was yet another learner driver doing a similar manoeuvre. Hmm, he wondered, this would be pretty irritating if he lived here.
He started the engine, turned the van around and drove up to the gates. Then, tugging his baseball cap peak low, he wound down the window and stared at the smart, brass entryphone panel. There was a numerical keypad with a bell button beside it, and the lens of a CCTV camera. The camera did not worry him; it could not see much of his face.
He rang the bell, hard and long. There was no answer. After a minute, he rang again. Still no answer. To be sure, he rang one more time.
Good, good, good, no one home!
He climbed out, clutching a small toolkit, then unscrewed the front plate of the keypad and lifted it off. He studied the wiring beneath for some moments, prodding around with his tiny, insulated screwdriver, working out from his knowledge from his job installing such systems what was what. Then he shorted them out. Moments later the gates swung obligingly open.
He replaced the keypad cover, then drove up the steep, curving tarmac driveway, passing a garage block, with what looked like accommodation above it, to his left. Nice granny annexe, he thought. The driveway formed a loop in front of a large red-brick mansion. Definitely swanky, he thought. He parked the van nose into a yew hedge on the far side of the drive, so it would look like a workman’s or a gardener’s vehicle, then climbed out.
Just to be sure the house was empty, he walked up to the porch, which seemed even bigger and taller as he approached it, and rang the bell, his story prepared. He was delivering a package, and was at the wrong address if anyone should open the door. But again there was no response. He rapped several times with the brass lion knocker. Again, no response.
This was so good!
He checked his watch, then took a walk around the side of the house. Beautifully trimmed terraced lawns. A swimming pool beneath a blue cover, with a wooden pool house that looked in good condition. A grass tennis court, the net lowered and the markings faded. He checked his watch again, to be sure. Almost an hour before Red was due here. To meet her client, Mr Andrew Austin.
He strode back to the van, opened the rear doors and peered in, checking all was in order, and was pleased with his handiwork. The six restraining straps bolted securely to the sides of the van, and the floor. Then he peered inside the leather holdall, to check all the accessories. Hood. Gag. Blowtorch. Scalpel. Power drill. Folding razor. Pliers. Water bottles. Caffeine tablets to stop her falling asleep. She would need to stay awake, to fully appreciate all that he had planned for her!
Oh, Red, we are going to have such fun. Bringing back all those memories. You lying there as I read out all those texts you sent me. Hundreds of them.
He looked at one, still stored on the phone he had long ago stopped using.
Oh God, I love you, Bryce. Something is missing today . . . and it is deffo you. I so love you, adore you, fancy you, admire you, want you, yearn for you, pine for you, misssssss you soooooooooo much. Can’t wait, seriously cannot wait, to see you tonite! To be in your arms. To hold you and taste you. XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Will you remember this one, Red? I’ll make the pain bearable enough so you will. I promise. You are going to be remembering so much in the coming hours.
Sooooooooo much.
Happy days!
He closed up the van, then walked back around the side of the house looking for a suitable hiding place that would give him a clear view of the driveway. He found a laurel bush that was well sited, and took up a position behind it.
Then he settled down to wait.
91
Monday, 4 November
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Roy Grace said, for the third or maybe fourth time, turning to Cleo who was sitting in the back of the marked Traffic Police BMW estate car, as PC Omotoso drove them down the fast lane of the M23, lights blazing and siren wailing.
‘I understand,’ she said with a wan smile. ‘You don’t have to apologize. I understand totally. You don’t have any option.’
‘Not much of a start to your honeymoon, is it, sir?’ Omotoso said grimly.
Grace shook his head miserably. ‘No.’
At least Cleo did, genuinely, understand, he thought. And, involuntarily, he suddenly found himself thinking about how Sandy would have reacted to this same situation. Not at all well. Nothing like the calm, understanding way in which Cleo was taking it.
She reached out and took his hand, gently massaging it. ‘You really didn’t have any choice, darling,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I did, I could have ignored the damned phone.’
‘And then? We’d have got to Venice and there would have been a message waiting for you at the hotel, and we’d still have had to come back. You wouldn’t have been able to stay there, I know you too well. So it’s better it happened before we boarded the plane. We’ll still have our honeymoon – it’s just delayed, that’s all.’
He squeezed her hand back, and stared into her eyes. She was incredible. He’d never, ever in his life loved someone more than he loved this woman, and the way she was handling her disappointment made him love her even more – and made him even more determined that yes, they would have their honeymoon soon, and when they did he would make it all up to her.
But for the moment his thoughts were a million miles from the airport lounge and their glass of champagne, and their suite at the Cipriani with the bottle of champagne he had ordered to be waiting on ice for their arrival.
His thoughts were on the fire at the Royal Regent building. Where Red Westwood had been buying a flat.
And where, although it was not yet confirmed, it would appear that one of his best officers had died this morning.
And that he was responsible.
He squeezed Cleo’s hand hard, again, for comfort. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.
Twenty minutes later, the siren still wailing, PC Tony Omotoso weaved the BMW through the standstill traffic along Marine Parade. Grace could smell the vile stench of the fire increasingly strongly as they neared the building. Ahead he could see a blaze of blue flashing lights, and as they approached the scene, he saw three fire appliances, two ambulances, the dark green mortuary van with the Coroner’s emblem on the side, police cars blocking most of the wide street, and two television outside broadcast vehicles as well as a Radio Sussex outside broadcast car.
Fire hoses were hurtling jets of water through windows on the ground floor and first floor of the blackened building. Thick dark smoke was belching out. Charred debris lay on the pavement. A large number of onlookers, several of them holding up their phone cameras, were crowded around, kept at a safe distance by a cordon of blue and white tape and several police officers.
‘Do you mind dropping Cleo home?’ Grace asked Tony Omotoso as they pulled up as close as they could get.
‘Of course not, sir,’ he said.
Grace kissed Cleo, then climbed out into the choking stench of noxious smoke and damp. Almost instantly, and to his horror, he saw the new Assistant Chief Constable, Cassian Pewe, in his full dress uniform and braided cap, striding towards him, followed by the Chief Constable, Tom Martinson, also in full uniform.
‘Roy!’ Pewe said with a cadaverous smile, his eyes as ever cold as glass, his arm outstretched. They shook hands. Pewe’s was, as Grace remembered it from before, damp and limp, and Pewe winced, visibly, under Roy’s strong grip. ‘It’s good to see you again. But what terrible circumstances.’
Grace nodded, blinking away tears, and his voice choked; he could barely get out the word. ‘Yes.’ Then wi
th difficulty he added, ‘sir.’
‘Terrible news,’ the Chief Constable said, also shaking Roy’s hand.
‘It is, sir.’
‘Let’s not be formal, Roy,’ Pewe said, giving Tom Martinson a sideways glance. ‘We’ve had our issues in the past, but let’s look forward now, shall we?’
‘Good idea,’ Grace replied warily. He wondered what bombshell was coming next.
But instead, Pewe said, ‘This is one hell of a start to my first day here.’
‘And to my honeymoon.’
Pewe nodded. ‘It’s good of you to come. That must be bloody hard.’
‘Not as hard as losing an officer, sir. But are we absolutely sure we have?’
Pewe pointed at the building, then shot a glance at his watch. ‘I’m told that Detective Sergeant Bella Moy entered the building to try to save a child around eight this morning. She hasn’t come back out, although she saved the child. It is now five to eleven. The Fire Chief has told me no one could survive in there for even just one minute without breathing apparatus.’
‘She’s smart,’ Roy Grace said. ‘Maybe she’s found an air pocket.’ He knew he was clutching at straws. ‘Has anyone searched the place?’
Pewe pointed at the building. ‘Fire officers have searched as much as they can, with breathing apparatus and with remote cameras. The stairs have all gone. They’ve been up on the ladders and their opinion is—’
There was a sudden commotion behind them. Both men turned. A man was shouting. ‘Let me through! I’m a police officer, let me fucking through, you halfwits. That’s my fiancée in there. LET ME THROUGH!’
It was Norman Potting, his face sheet-white, holding up his warrant card, shaking off the hands of a uniformed police officer as he ducked under the tape and began running towards the smoking front door.
‘Norman!’ Grace shouted, alarmed, then sprinted after him. Two firefighters got there first, restraining the Detective Sergeant by his arms.